Wrestling Jerusalem: Solo drama. Written and performed by Aaron Davidman. Directed by Michael John Garcés. Through April 6. $30. Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission St., S.F. 80 minutes. www.theintersection.org.

There's a sinuous, yearning beauty in Aaron Davidman's segue from a Hebrew song to a Muslim prayer. Deep sadness and wistful hope emanate from his portraits of Israelis and Palestinians in "Wrestling Jerusalem," which opened Saturday at Intersection for the Arts.

"It's complicated," Davidman tells us at the beginning. It sure is.

That the play is also for the most part compelling may be more the result of Davidman's remarkable solo performance than his text. Drawn from his interactions with a broad array of people over many years and trips to Israel, "Wrestling" is his attempt as a "progressive American Jew" to make some sense - emotional if not intellectual - of the endlessly protracted conflict over what, for several major religions, is the Holy Land.

Davidman plunges in with a passionate litany of who or what war, treaty, incursion or idea started it all. He transports us neatly to UC Berkeley's Sproul Steps, where, as a bright-eyed Berkeley High student, he's taking part in a 1985 antiapartheid demonstration, then returning to the same scene after 9/11 for a huge protest against attacks on Arab Americans. Chillingly, he hears the crowd's anti-racial-profiling chants turn to "Death to Israel," "Death to the Jews."

Passions run high through "Wrestling," as staged with a musical grace and riveting focus on the performer by Michael John Garcés, artistic director of Cornerstone Theater. There's an expectant tension even in the introductory scenes, as Davidman recounts his youthful first trip to Jerusalem to study Torah and a later encounter with an eagerly proselytizing Muslim - emphasizing the inclusive, enlightenment-seeking basis of each belief.

There's a lot of conviction but little evidence of that kind of openness in what follows. Davidman travels in Israel and the occupied West Bank - to Ramallah, Hebron, the Dead Sea - incisively depicting young and old, male and female, intellectuals, soldiers and ordinary citizens.

A special forces commander's sorrowful take on military necessity comes up against a Palestinian farmer's conviction that his people can wait out the occupiers. The illegitimacy of Hamas and Zionism are argued side by side. In Garcés' stark stagings, using Allen Willner's lights to texture a crumpled canvas backdrop, Davidman's encounters with the Wailing Wall and the concentration-camp-like border-security wall register as vividly as the shadows of Stacey Printz's concentrated choreography.

No answers are forthcoming. We could hardly expect any. Davidman's quest is rooted in the importance of listening to each other to seek understanding. His portraits are riveting, and the varieties of intransigence revealed are disturbing. But for anyone who's been paying attention, they're also painfully familiar.